PROCEEDINGS OF THE POLYTECHNIC ASSOCIATION. 619 



concrete, I have denominated food, whether good or bad, for 

 nourishment or nervous stimuhis. 



FOOD. 



The only proper materials for human food are such vegetable 

 and animal substances as taste pleasantly, and are in the same 

 state of organization in which they were in the healthy living 

 vegetable or animal in which they grew. But when any mate- 

 rial intended for food has been operated on by any destructive 

 chemical analysis, or by any dissolution of the organic fibers or 

 particles that united the various ultimate constituent elements 

 they contain, such as combustion, fermentation, putrefaction, 

 evaporation, or dissolution, then it cannot be successfully digested 

 and used in the activity, growth and repairs of healthy animal 

 life. That is, our animal growth and repairs must always be 

 made up of organic fibers, or particles, but never of ultimate 

 atoms. Hence digestion is a peculiar vital operation, more like 

 mechanical disintegration for re-arrangement than like chemical 

 dissolution of the finest fibres or particles to their ultimate con- 

 stituents of carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen, &c. 



In pursuance of this theory, we should not, for food, use soda 

 nor potash, because they are extracted from vegetables by the 

 totally destructive analysis of fire ; nor use vinegar nor tartaric 

 acid, for food, becau^ they are obtained only by the destruction 

 of vegetables by fermentation ; nor carrion of beef or fish, nor 

 rotten vegetables, because the integrity of their organization has 

 been destroyed by putrefaction ; nor nourish ourselves with 

 alcohol, because it has been extracted from vegetable substances 

 by both analytical fermentation, and evaporation, or double 

 elective afiinity ; nor feed on morphine nor quinine, because they 

 have been dissolved out of vegetable organizations. 



Cooking, when resorted to, should always be done ip such a 

 manner as only to disintegrate, or soften the concretion of the 

 fibres or particles of food, merely to assist the mechanical opera- 

 tions of pulverization and soaking in the mouth ; but never to 

 dissolve nor otherwise disorganize the particles that make up the 

 constitution of vegetable and animal substances, nor tend to re- 

 duce them to their ultimate elementary chemical atoms, such as 

 oxygen, h3^drogen and nitrogen. If vegetable and animal sub- 

 stances thus cooked do not taste agreeably, they would not be 

 nutritious nor stimulating by mixing energetic chemicals, nor 

 by submitting them to disorganizing analysis by much fire. 



